An apparatus is known from U.S. Pat. No. 6,865,865 for pulling a tubular film or a film hood down over a large object or stack of goods. Stack of goods means here in particular a plurality of packages, packets, bags or such units that are stacked to form a parallelepiped, typically standing on a pallet. This stack of goods is hooded with a tubular film or with a film hood, in order to give the stack of goods a greater stability on the one hand, and on the other hand in order to protect the stack of goods from atmospheric influences. The stack of goods can also be a few stacked units or else also one individual larger unit, for example from the white goods field (washing machines, refrigerators, dishwashers and suchlike). The stack of goods does not necessarily have to be parallelepipedal, but rather may also have different shapes. The tubular film or film hood that is used adapts itself, as it were, to the shape of the stack of goods.
Generally the tubular film is fed to these apparatuses from a tubular film supply. The tubular film is opened over the stack of goods and is gathered vertically.
As described in above-cited U.S. Pat. No. 6,865,865 the gathering arrangement has gathering rollers with each of which a single counter-roller is associated whose rotation axis is below the rotation axis of the gathering roller. For gathering, the tubular film is guided through between the gathering rollers and the respective counter-rollers. This system can subsequently also be used for transversely stretching the tubular film and also as a covering apparatus for covering the tubular film over the stack of goods. In the covering process, the tubular film is ungathered, the ungathered tubular film is again guided through between the gathering rollers and counter-rollers. The problem with this known apparatus is that at the end of the covering process or during the ungathering of the tubular film end, the tubular film sometimes jumps off in an uncontrolled manner from the gathering fingers or gathering corners and consequently can not be placed very precisely in the desired position on the stack of goods or on the pallet. In this respect, the known apparatus is capable of improvement.